PROBLEM GREEN / Four People, Three Chords, Zero Regrets.
We chat to Emi Ew, vocalist of Problem Green, about their highly addictive EP's and the narratives that come with writing music.
Problem Green is the kind of band that makes you feel like you stumbled onto something rather than being sold it. Based in Sydney on Gadigal Wangal Land, they play garage punk with the energy of people who decided to do this for themselves and then, somewhat reluctantly, decided to let you in on it.
Their new single Dissolve is out now. It started as a song about a guy named Larry and ended up being about ego death, feral dogs, and the particular cruelty of a world that asks everything of you and gives nothing back. Which, honestly, sounds about right.
We sat down with Emi Ew — vocalist, co-writer, and founder of the band alongside Sweet B — to talk about where Problem Green came from, what Dissolve is actually about, and why the rhythm section gets final say.
The origin story of Dissolve is almost too perfect. Sweet B — co-writer and guitarist — had been deep in Ty Segall’s Melted and had recently rewatched the scene in Breaking Bad Season 1 where Jesse Pinkman dissolves a body in a bathtub, only to create, as Emi puts it, “a mess of porcelain and flesh.”
From that, a song emerged.
“B wrote Dissolve over a single looped chord progression, a pattern they fell into after being told by a music lecturer that songs are structured with an A, B and C section… ‘the only thing you wouldn’t do is just have an A section’, so naturally Dissolve is written with just an A section.”
Two years passed. When they finally went to record it, the band took a room recording to their friend Boston Brinkman to mix — and ended up re-tracking bass, lead guitar, and vocals with him. The DIY problem-solving is characteristic: because the band hadn’t played to a click, Boston left the opening guitar line from the original recording to establish timing before B’s fresh guitar track comes in. The session was, by Emi’s account, “playful and collaborative,” resulting in a “deeply saturated layering of guitar tones” that sets Dissolve apart from anything they’ve done before.
You can hear it. The thing sits in a particular pocket — dense but not muddy, loose but not sloppy.
Problem Green began, as many good things do, with no expectations whatsoever.
“Problem Green started with myself (Emi Ew) and Sweet B, we first started writing music together over a decade ago, B had ‘quit music’ and I didn’t even consider myself a musician, with no pressure or expectation we wrote freely and without a cause.”
A shared love of Australian punk and garage music brought them to Halloween 2022, when they started practicing under the name Problem Green with a friend named Dave on drums.
Then came Reuben.
“Eventually we decided to rope in a bass player, Reuben, who at one point quite frankly told us ‘we are going to have to start gigging or recording to make this worth my time’, so you can thank him for our debut EP Go Big Massive Mouth coinciding so quickly with our first handful of shows in ‘24.”
Go Big Massive Mouth was recorded and performed with a new drummer, Nash — who, in a detail that tells you everything about this band’s energy, learned their entire set in only two practices.
James came in shortly after as their full-time bass player, completing the current lineup. The rhythm section isn’t just logistical — they’re editorial.
“James and Nash are no doubt our backbone rhythm section, filtering through the backlog of ideas (of which there have been many) and sharpening our sound and direction. They have become our litmus test, if it clicks with the rhythm section in the room, it’s a Problem Green song.”
That’s not a small thing. Plenty of bands say they write together. Fewer have actually built a structural test for what belongs and what gets cut.
It would be easy to describe Problem Green’s aesthetic — the raw recordings, the confrontational artwork, the mascots — as a pose. It isn’t.
“In terms of writing, B and I are very narrative driven, usually a song idea is set up by an opening lyric or sentiment which informs the narrative and tone to follow. The authenticity, I would say, is likely due the fact that most of what we write about is from personal experience and much of it is written in an attempt to process our feelings and the world around us.”
The artwork follows the music. The cover of Go Big Massive Mouth depicts Bertha the Bunyip — a real underwater animatronic who lives under the Murray Bridge, rises when fed coins, opens her mouth wide, lets out a roar, and is routinely vandalized by people who jam her mouth open and leave her roaring endlessly until the next repair. A mascot who embodies the sentiment, as Emi says. The sentiment being, one assumes: something that was made to express something, left open and screaming by forces that don’t care.
Emi’s own stage persona — Emi Ew — comes from a more deliberate place.
“The menacing character of Emi Ew was born from my personal initiative to unmask and know myself better. As one of the many unlucky creatures who truly believed that my worth hinged on my ability to be beautiful, agreeable and quiet, it was imperative to me that my creative persona was unashamedly the opposite of what I was conditioned to believe about myself. From the beginning, Emi Ew was never afraid to be ugly, off putting or loud, why would they be? That’s all part of the charm.”
That’s not a persona. That’s a correction. Back to the song.
Dissolve started with a character named Larry — “king of the dogs” — whose name was, per Emi, “inspired by the long drawn-out vowel sounds of Ty Segall.” Larry had originally ordered death to his hounds before wishing death on himself, echoing Adolf Hitler poisoning his dog Blondi before taking cyanide. The cheerful guitar over which B plays this is, Emi notes, something of a Sweet B signature — “usually grinning ear to ear during our sets, playing along cheerfully to songs which are in essence about ego death and suicide.”
Then Emi rewrote it in first person. Larry became “lonely.”
“The sentiment changed to ‘Lonely death by the hounds, I did wish this on myself’ speaking to a fixation of mine I have long held since childhood, of running away to live with feral dogs.”
They reference Oxana Malaya and a 60 Minutes program they watched as a kid, after which they “practiced living my life as a feral dog for a few days.” This is offered without elaboration.
“I think the through line is clear, the world asks too much of us and teaches us to neglect ourselves, we no longer know how to survive in the natural world, if we ran away with the dogs we would likely just get consumed by them.”
That’s a lot to carry in a single-chord loop, it carries it.
The earlier EP, Go Big Massive Mouth, covers similar territory from a different angle. Emi shares a verse from Stoned Tonight — a song about weed addiction and the specific cognitive dissonance of knowing something is hurting you and doing it anyway:
I look around my world,
I found that there’s no future for me here.
I’d cry but I’m afraid I’ve shed my tears.
I found that there’s no future for me here.
I’d cry but I’m dehydrated.
“Sometimes these feelings are so heavy and dreadful, the only way to shake them loose is to write a song about it, at least that’s the only way I know how.”
But identity in Problem Green isn’t just lyrical subject matter — it’s structural. It’s how the band works.
“Identity is really at the centre of all that we do, it’s the catalyst for our songwriting but also the rubric for our sound. We rely heavily on each other during songwriting, all four band members do, we have over time formed a fused band identity.”
That last phrase — “fused band identity” — is doing real work. It’s not four people in a room. It’s something that didn’t exist before they were all in it.
When asked for influences, the band comes in swinging.
“Ok we do talk music together a lot, so let me start off with saying that you should be listening to Twisted Teens by Twisted Teens.”
From there: the Pixies, Kim Deal era only — and The Breeders, and The Amps, all three considered essential by what Emi describes as the “Dealership (our unofficial Kim Deal fan club).” Then, by member: Nash is on Casiopea and Creedence Clearwater Revival; James is into MJ Lenderman and Slint; B is running Ty Segall and Suburban Lawns; Emi is listening to Amyl and the Sniffers and Crowded House.
That’s a list that tells you something. There’s no aesthetic consistency to perform — just what people are actually listening to.
On cassette, Emi gives a shout to Shaky Hands resurfacing with leftover stock, Media Puzzle (”killing it with every release and have an extremely strong cassette game”), and Dial Up Modem’s Live at the Duke of Enmore — which features their own bassist James on drums, and which Emi released themselves through their new DIY label, EETS.
“I legitimately never got sick of listening and relistening to this tape while making it, it’s such a strong offering of stripped down garage rock and roll… it also includes a handpicked arrangement of 99 most requested sound effects on side B by yours truly.”
The 99 most requested sound effects just sitting there on Side B. Of course.
Problem Green dropped Dissolve in January, with their second EP Sorry I Don’t Matter arriving on April 19th! They will be launching their second EP at Enmore Hotel at a FREE show on release day, so if you’re in Sydney make sure you head on over. They describe the year as coming at them “hard and fast” — and the plan, insofar as there is one, is to stay creative, stay limber, and keep moving.
On the question of touring outside NSW — specifically, whether they’ll be coming back to Naarm/Melbourne — Emi closes with something that started as a throwaway line and has since become a deadline:
“I always had this running joke that PG would play again in Melbourne when Eddy Current Suppression Ring plays again in Sydney, amazingly they just announced a show… so I guess we will have to start making some plans…”
Watch this space.
Dissolve is out now. Sorry I Don’t Matter is coming. Follow Problem Green and keep up with everything happening in the DIY scene at Global Disrupt Records and on our Substack.